You may at first think your purpose as a blogger is to make money. It’s not. That’s just a byproduct of your purpose. Your real purpose as an authority blogger is to create relationships with your readers and other bloggers.
This is sometimes where people realize they are not cut out to be bloggers.
And that’s ok. If you find this to be the case you may want to think about creating niche sites or product based squidoo sites.
Blogging is at is very base a social endeavor. You need to create relationships as a blogger to have a really successful blog.
Relationships with your readers:
When you create a relationship with your reader they feel like they know you. They feel like you are talking to them when you write your posts. They identify with your content.
When this happens it’s more like you’ve got a friend than a reader. It’s much easier to take a recommendation from a friend than a stranger. Think about this. When is the last time you saw/heard a commercial for a new product ~ be it a workout video, a book, a kitchen gadget ~ doesn’t matter. Do you run out and buy it based on the commercial?
If it’s a kitchen gadget I sure may be tempted lol… however… if I have a friend say “oh I got this thing and it’s awesome/works great/helped me lose weight… whatever. I’m much more likely to actually go buy this thing (especially if I already had the itch). This holds true for this segment we have on one of our news programs each Wednesday. It’s called “Does it work Wednesday”. Every week they choose a product (usually sold on tv) and test it out. They then tell you if it worked or if it didn’t. You get to see a bit of the people trying it etc. I trust this segment and have made purchases based on their opinion of whether it worked or not. NOT from an infomercial, but from people who I trust are telling me the truth about the product!!
Anyway… all I’m saying is you need to create relationships, get to know your readers.
Relationships with other bloggers:
These relationships are really important because having allies and friends is huge in the blogging world. One email mention from someone that has a big list and a big following can change your entire business. No one is going to mention you on their list if they don’t know you.
I’ll tell you right now that just emailing people and asking them to promote/mention/whatever for you is not going to work unless they know who you are and like you. 
Creating relationships with bloggers creates opportunities for joint ventures, for guest blogging spots, for ad swaps… the list goes on. But you can’t do any of those things without first creating a relationship with some bloggers in your niche.
How to create and nurture blogging relationships:
With readers:
This one’s pretty simple. Create excellent pillar content regularly and consistently. People will learn they can trust you to have new content and they’ll keep coming back. If it’s content they find valuable/helpful/uplifting ~ whatever your niche is, they will not only keep coming back, they will tell other people about it as well.
Ask for comments. Start a conversation. Then participate. Answer your comments ~ ALWAYS. Someone has gone to the trouble to create a conversation on your blog, answer. Simple as that. Your comment replies are one of the biggest assets you have to creating and nuturing a relationship with your readers.
With other bloggers:
Reading and commenting on their blogs are the best ways to begin a relationship.
Send an email. This is after you’ve been commenting for a while and they are probably familiar with your name. Send them an email. Don’t ask them for anything, or try to get anything from them. Just make personal contact. Tell them what you love about their blog. Thank them for the regular/consistent/fantastic content. Tell them a story about what you learned/were able to do/helped by their posts. (WE love that a lot, us bloggers!!) They will remember you if you do this.
Tweet their stuff. A great way to create relationships and nuture them is to post other people’s posts to twitter or facebook. If you use the @theirusername they will know you did it. They will remember you if you do it regularly. (and chances are they will start retweeting you too ~ which is a benefit to you)
This week let’s create some relationships!
1. Keep publishing your posts. 3 this week. That will be a goal every week. If you’re having trouble with content make sure you go back and read the content creation series I did. That should give you plenty of content ideas. You can also grab Yaro Starak’s free ebook Blog Profit Blueprint. He goes over some excellent ideas for creating content (as well as getting traffic)
2. Start making blog comments on related blogs. I would suggest you find 10 or so blogs in your niche or a related/relevant niche. Make sure these blogs post regularly. Add them to your RSS reader/page and visit them regularly. Read the post and then comment.
To make this a double whammy of productivity find blogs in your niche that use the commentluv or keywordluv plugin. That way you will get not only a link to your homepage, but an anchor text link as well. Here’s a great way to find commentluv blogs on your topic. You can also go to google and put a keword you’re looking for and the word commentluv in the search box and see what comes up. I just found a couple decent ones testing that out.
Getting this piece organized can be tricky, but once you get it down it will be quick as lightening to get through this promotional piece of your day.
Here’s what I do.
1. I search around and when I find a blog that
- posts regularly
- uses commentluv
2. Add them to my Igoogle page
Anyone can create an igoogle page. It’s just a customized google homepage. You’ll have to have a gmail address to get started ~ but they’re free so grab one if you don’t have one.
You’ll need to sign into your account. Then when you go to www.google.com you can choose igoogle. You can set it as your default homepage so it always opens to that page when you enter google.com.
Once you’ve got your homepage up you can begin to add blogs to it. It’s really simple. Watch how I do it in this video:
For the non video folks:
Find a blog you like.
Click the orange RSS icon.
Choose google from the list of options that come up.
Choose google homepage from the two options that come up.
Bam… you’re done. It will be on your customized google homepage.
I like to do it this way because I personally like to go to other people’s blogs to see what’s going on and to comment. I like to organize my homepage so all the blogs I have with commentluv on 1 topic are all in one column. (You can move your RSS boxes around by just dragging them and dropping them where you want them to go).
I have 3 columns on my page. 1 for IM blogs. 1 for topics related to my balance blog that aren’t using commentluv or keywordluv and the 3rd column is for all the balance related blogs that are using those plugins.
I can easily see when new posts are up that I haven’t read ~ they will not be highlighted on my homepage. I can go read the post, and comment very quickly. I have about 25 blogs in the 3rd column right now and I probably spend from 45 minutes to an hour a day reading and commenting on blogs (as well as finding new ones to engage with).
Don’t forget to tweet the post (use su.pr if you’ve got it installed so you can schedule the tweets through the day)
Next time we’re going to look even closer at how to find great blogs to create relationships with, so stay tuned. If you have any questions/issues please feel free to ask in the comment section.
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Great read! Seeing all the feedback you consistently get from your readers, I can tell you know what you’re talking about. Keep up the good work!
These are great tips. Blogging has been a great way to build relationships for my San Diego real estate business. And I’m a believer in the do-follow movement. I’ll make sure to RSS internetmarketingformommies right now!
Geoff@San Diego homes for sale´s last [type] ..San Diego Homes Sale Prices Up
Great blogging tips. I am defintely going to use Igoogle to organize my own blog page as it will make it easier for me. I wish I had these tips when I started out.
.-= Darren´s last blog ..Comment Kahuna =-.
Thanks for teaching step by step Jackie. You are a great mentor for people like me
Nice knowing you and learning from you
.-= james´s last blog ..Sony MDR-NC60 Noise Canceling Headphones definitely do the job. My Review =-.
I recently stumbled upon your blog – and I am so glad I did – I absolutely it – I have read most of your archive posts.
Enjoyed reading this post as well. I use Google Reader for reading relevant blogs. and yours is on there now…
.-= Sandy Naidu´s last blog ..How To Add Favicon To Your LifeStyle Themed Site ? =-.
Spot on the money Jackie. Between readers liking your style, to commenting like a mad wo/man, awesome relationships are just around the corner.
I know this first hand.
The key is to start as a beginner realizing other bloggers, in your niche or not, are colleagues, NOT competitors.
.-= Dennis Edell @ Direct Sales Marketing´s last blog ..Attention Readers of all Kinds! – Multiple Articles Comin’ Atcha!! =-.
Great point on the colleagues, not competitors. So many of us start in the niche site arena where you don’t want anyone to “know your niches” and everyone seems like competition ~ it’s much different in the blogging arena, and is quite frankly a lot more fun!! I LOVE being able to tell people what I blog about.
You would need to get a domain name. You might want to think about getting a ning community (free) or setting up a facebook fanpage (free). I think the ning community would give you ample space for conversation and interaction ~ and each person has their own profile page so they could post pics etc.
Hi Jackie,
First, let me tell you I love this blog and find it refreshing and informative, please keep up the good work.
Second, I need a couple of answers to some quick questions. I thought maybe you would help. My cousin and I are trying to organize a family reunion and communications are very hectic as there seems that there are over 150 people involved. I am wondering what you think of setting up a blog called _______ Cousins Family Reunion. Would I have to buy a domain name for it? Should I set it up as a simple membership site? (If yes, how?) Or should I just set it up and ask the other cousins to leave comments? What are your thoughts?
Thanks,
Sylvia
Well done for all your hard work in providing this high quality blog, I have taken a few tips from your layout and as I am building my own blog I hope you don’t mind me taking some of your ideas as they are brill! Thanks
.-= Debbie Love´s last blog ..What is a good computer program for keeping track of my real estate (rental homes) finances&personal finance? =-.
Super Duper posting, whenever I come across a blog that really has some excellent unique content I always want to say thankyou, there are so many blogs nowadays that are full of copied content.
.-= Carl Salmon´s last blog ..Cheap Web Hosting: Storage vs. Monthly Traffic =-.
Jackie
Another great post as always….you are slowly becoming my go to blog to learn things I didn’t know I needed to know! Your writing style is friendly and get to the point (and most importantly packed with good info)and I always learn something even if you have lead me to a previous post of yours.
What I learned today about commentluv is priceless , but I am worried posting on an IM blog such as yours will give me unwanted traffic…..I will explain…I once posted on another IM blog and the traffic to my site was crazy which I didn’t expect and a lot of people stayed looking around, I felt as if it was a copy session of my great content, am I just being paranoid??? What is your opinion?
Since I don’t need to comment or ask questions with a keyword (just icing on the cake) do you think it is wise to do so…of course if my site was IM related than I wouldn’t mind at all right!
.-= Leslie@ShouldDogsWearSnuggies´s last blog ..Should Dogs Wear Snuggies? updated Sat Mar 27 2010 9:46 am CDT =-.
Hi Leslie,
glad the post could help. I would suggest you find blogs related to your topic to leave comments on. While it isn’t a big deal using commentluv here, to comment on posts, ask questions etc. I wouldn’t go to a bunch of other IM blogs just for the purpose to comment for links. This defeats the purpose of commenting ~ creating relationships with other bloggers IN YOUR INDUSTRY. If you’ve got a dog blog you should be finding dog related blogs to comment on. (believe me there’s plenty) then when you get traffic from blog comments (and you will) they will be targeted visitors who are interested in what you’ve got to say.
There’s always the chance a spammer will grab your RSS feed and create a splog out of it ~ that’s just part of blogging and it happens all the time. Just consider it more links back to your site and don’t spend time worrying about it.
The video showed IM blogs on my Igoogle page because I have an IM blog.
The other 2 columns were all NON IM blogs for my other non IM site. Make sense?
Hi Craig,
I haven’t noticed an increase of moderation with the plugins. I had expected it, but thus far have not noticed it much.
We’re working our way to a popular blog step by step, 1 easy step at a time. You can’t do it all at once, and getting blog/twitter traffic is much easier than google traffic at the beginning. But that doesn’t mean we won’t be working on that in the future. If you watch keywords in your post titles you’ll be halfway to getting Google traffic, especially if you start regularly blog commenting on blogs with one or both of those plugins.
You are 100% correct. Blogging is socializing. One cant live just with the money their blog generates, unless they are authoritative and people come back exclusively for their products. Besides that subscribing to the feeds of blogs which you frequent is one great tip on staying connected and updated. I use softwares like feeddemon which can be synchronized with my google reader so that I dont miss anything even if i am away from my desk for a while. I had little experience with commentluv and keywordluv. What I observe is that they increase my moderation time heavily. Thanks to those offshore link builders. Have you experienced any problems with it? We would like to know about it in detail. In my perspective your blog should be getting enormous traffic on and off search engines.
.-= Craig@Car Rentals New Zealand´s last blog ..Rugby World Cup Car Rentals =-.
Jackie, I have been doing this for 8 months and am starting to build relationships. You have given me some good suggestions!!! Thank you for your insight.
.-= Arlene@emerycats´s last blog ..Protect your Furniture =-.